Strange circular feature

[charlieboy]

There is an entry between my house and next door. At the back of our house is this strange circular feature.



Do you have any thoughts on what it would have been for?
Could it be a mounting block?
Could it be to stop waggon wheels from damaging the corner of the house.
The next door house, painted white in the image, was built about 1800 and this part of our house is about 1720.
cb

 

[Penners]

I wonder whether it might have been a small well. Mind you, a mounting block isn't a bad idea - are/were there any stables at the back of the house?

 

[MikeG]

Have you dug the soil out and had a look inside? Or lifted some slabs around it? The clues here will be outside the boundaries of the photo. As with most things, the answer is in the context.

 

[charlieboy]

Penners - When I first saw it I also thought of a well. It is however solid brick with no hole in the middle. I am told that there was a well a few feet away from it.

Mike - you say "the answer is in the context". It is the context that I am trying to discover by looking at the odd bits of evidence that remain after 300 or more years. It could be that the house was at one time a farmhouse. ( There is a new farmhouse across the road built I would guess about 1820.) If I knew what this circular feature was it might give a clue as to the former use of my building.

 

[Pennyviz]

I've got a strange water pump contraption outside the house, built into one of the buttresses next to the kitchen, coming from the old well I am guessing. Could it be the base for one of those?

 

[Penners]

Penners - When I first saw it I also thought of a well. It is however solid brick with no hole in the middle. I am told that there was a well a few feet away from it.

The fact that there was a well a few feet away doesn't necessarily negate that possibility here. If the other well had deteriorated, or perhaps belonged to a neighbour, it's not impossible that a second one would be dug. Or it may have been the other way around - this one deteriorated or fell into disuse, hence the fact that it's bricked up.

Penny's suggestion is also a possibility: the well had a pump fitted.

I'm not necessarily pushing the idea of a well. I just think that the bricks inside the perimeter don't entirely rule it out.

 

[Pennyviz]

Would you dig a well so close to a wall though? I don't know - just asking the question!

Mounting block - either too small (unless they just rode shetlands) or would need to be stepped.

 

[plasticpigeon]

Could it be for a copper? Right kind of size, but an odd place.

 

[Penners]

I suppose that's possible, PP, but if were the remains of a copper stand (that was perhaps once inside a now-demolished outhouse) I would expect there to be a firehole in it.

 

[charlieboy]

I have just had a thought.
Could it just be a base to put a water butt on? A downpipe off the roof could easily be fed into a water butt at this point.

(I don't know when water was connected to the house but in the cellar there is what seems to be a brick tank about 3 foot in length, width and height. Collecting water off the roof seems to be how a supply was provided.)

 

[Penners]

Not impossible, Charlie, but I doubt that you're going to get a definitive answer to this one. So it's up to you to choose which explanation you like best!

 

[MatthewC]

I know of a similar shaped item, but a lot taller, beside a cowshed in Devon. It was one of the pillars in the gateway. Is it possible (having not seen the context) that yours was once taller? Mind you, I have no idea why it would not have been removed entirely, other than your wagon wheel idea in the first post.